tischda / gonow

Injects NOW variable into current command

gonow

Windows utility written in Go to inject a %NOW% environment variable in a command.

Install

There are no dependencies.

go get github.com/tischda/gonow

Usage

Usage: gonow [-h] [-v] command

OPTIONS:
  -h
  -help
        displays this help message
  -v
  -version
        print version and exit

Example:

# gonow "echo now is %%NOW%% and windir is %windir%"
now is 20170720-150748 and windir is C:\WINDOWS

Note that the %%NOW%% is replaced internally so % must be doubled.

Background

I used to write this kind of code to name my log files with the current date:

:: compute current date for log file
set T=%TIME: =0%
set T=%T:~0,2%%T:~3,2%%T:~6,2%
set D=%DATE:~-4%%DATE:~-7,-5%%DATE:~-10,-8%
set LOGFILE=%LOG_DIR%\%JOB%_%D%-%T%.log

But this method only works for the French locale and is generally error prone.

OK, but I still want to set a variable. Now you can do this:

# for /f "delims=" %%a in ('gonow "echo %%%%NOW%%%%"') do @set REALNOW=%%a
# echo %REALNOW%
20170720-151620

References

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1192476/format-date-and-time-in-a-windows-batch-script